The advent of substantial hardware improvements combined with standardized audio and video software applications has allowed the use of complex audio and video functions in even the most common multimedia computer applications. Personal computer systems have been adopted to run multimedia software applications which include audio and video information. Several multimedia specification committees have established and proposed standards for encoding/compressing and decoding/decompressing audio and video information. MPEG I and II established by the Motion Picture Expert Group, are the most widely accepted international standard in the field of the multimedia personal computer software applications
In addition to finding easy software solutions to the vast number of multimedia system available, system designers continually search for solutions that would make using these multimedia system as easy and as less expensive as possible. Some of these hardware solutions include integrating compact disc drives into many multimedia system to provide audio and video capabilities to these multimedia systems.
To enable compact disc capabilities in many of these multimedia systems, the compact disc industry has established certain format standards for the data stored on discs utilized in these multi-media systems. These data formats are typically defined by their "Color" Book Specification (e.g., Red, Book, Green Book, White Book, etc). These standards are used as the basis for which the compact disc drive may use and interpret data stored in a disc. From these "Color" Book Specification, several other disc standard formats have evolved.
Among these standards is the Yellow Book standard developed in 1984 by Philips Corporation and Sony Corporation (herein incorporated by reference). The Yellow Book is an extension to the Red Book to add the ability to store computer data, as well as other compressed audio/video picture data. Another standard specifically defined by Philips in its Green Book Specification (also herein incorporated by reference) is the CD-I format. The CD-I format is intended to run on proprietary hardware under the CD-RTOS operating system. A CD-I playback system can handle compressed audio, graphics, and full motion video data in an interactive real time manner.
Yet another disc specification defined by Philips is the White Book Specification. The White Book SPEC defines a disc format which uses a "bridge disc" format to allow a disc to be played on both a CD-I player and a VideoCD player. Included in the White Book SPEC is the VideoCD disc format which defines video data compression and decompression for a VideoCD compact disc player.
Despite the various disc standards developed by Philips Corporation and Sony Corporation, these standards lack true compact disc compatibility of the various compact disc players which play these different format discs. Thus, for example, a CD-I format disc could not be played on a VideoCD based player, and alternatively, a VideoCD format disc could not be played on a CD-I based player. The lack of compatibility often means that system users have to purchase proprietary hardware with each different disc format e.g., a CD-I disc drive for CD-I formatted discs.
FIG. 1 is a simplified block diagram illustrating a prior art system's handling of CD-I and VideoCD formatted discs in a computer system. The computer system shown in FIG. 1 includes a system bus 102 for communicating information, a central processing unit (CPU) 110 coupled to system bus 102 to process information, main memory 120 coupled to system bus 102 to store data and instructions processed by CPU 110, storage unit 125 coupled system bus 102 to store data.
Computer system 100 further includes video processor 135 coupled to system bus 102 to process video data, and display device 140 coupled to system bus 102 to display video and graphics images. Computer system 100 may further include either VideoCD interface 150 or CD-I interface 160 depending on the type of disc format that computer system may be adapted to handle.
Accordingly, if computer system 100 is designed to handle VideoCD format discs, VideoCD interface 150 is coupled to system bus 102 to handle VideoCD formatted disc 155. Alternatively, if computer system 100 is designed to handle CD-I formatted discs, CD-I interface 160 is coupled to system bus 102 to handle CD-I formatted disc 165. A system setup as shown in FIG. 1 does not allow a computer user to play VideoCD formatted disc in a system configured for CD-I formats or the vice versa. The incompatibility of the two different disc formats in the same computer system result in system users having to switch hardware or purchase separate hardware to play the various disc formats.
To solve the incompatibility problems with the various disc formats, Philips has developed a bridging format disc known as the CD-bridge Disc to allow a CD-I player to play both CD-I format disc and a VideoCD format disc. However, the CD-bridge format does not solve the problem of the inability to play discs with either the CD-I or VideoCD formats in a conventional multi-media computer system running a conventional operating system such as MSDOS or MSWindows developed by Microsoft Corporation.
The inability to play the different formatted discs from either Philips and Sony prevents conventional multimedia system users from enjoying a catalog of video and audio discs from these companies. Additionally, users with incompatible multi-media systems end up spending extra sums of money to purchase proprietary add-on hardware to traditional multi-media systems to enable these systems play the variety of different format discs.
Accordingly, improvements to conventional multimedia computer systems which overcome VideoCD and CD-I formats incompatibility problems of the prior art is presently desired.